WorkingMummy

Feel for you as like Saffron we had this with our first and it is a real concern I know. We too were ultimately told by the paediatrician not to worry. I remember him telling us that "all poo is good poo" unless it is white or black or has any sign of red (ie blood) in it. Green, yellow, brown, thick, thin, smooth, bitty, all good. Just as long as it comes out! Paying money for peace of mind is often well worth it. But I'd say wait, if you can bear it, for the feedback you get from NHS lab first and in the meantime take the cheaper alternatives Saffron suggests (which is often exactly the kind of thing a consultant physician is not best placed to help you with).

I myself am a bit hacked off by the hacked off campaign. I agree with what has been said above about importance of a free press and about the already illegal nature of abusive behaviour. So take all that out of the equation, and what you are actually left with is a campaign about privacy. And given that people of interest to the press are, 99 % of time, kind of well known, then, whatever happened with the awful (and sub judicie) interception of Amanda Dowler's voicemail, this is mostly about the privacy of celebrities, politicians and the Royal Family. But has it occurred to anyone else that the country has been sold a bit of a pup by the pro-privacy brigade? I totally revile MucMullen's phrase, that "privacy is for pervs". But it is bloody well for the rich. Yes, I feel sorry for Kate of Cambridge that her boobs were plastered all over the French press without her say so. But what woman without her huge position of privilege has access to a sunbed with a gorgeous view upon which she can take her top off and know for sure that only her husband (and servants) will see? I don't read the tabloid press much, do not care who the creator of Alan Partridge sleeps with, and feel very sorry for Steve Coogan that he was put through the mill. But if I, in my little life, had an affair and started to act out a mid life crisis, I can tell you, everyone in my very gossipy profession would find out eventually and talk about it no end for a while. News may even reach my spouse (and from his point of view, why shouldn't it?) The nearest anyone in Leveson came to changing my mind was Max Moseley. However, as inspirational as he was, I was left thinking, "So, using your immense wealth, you went to a lot of trouble to keep your exclusive, expensive indulge-your-fantasy parties secret, and, er, someone found out. The libel was bad (and dealt with). But as for this "invasion of your privacy", what are you saying? You have a right NOT to be caught at it. Cos I can tell you, that is a right the rest of us do not have. My point is, none of us has much privacy within our own world. People in the public eye just inhabit a bigger world than us, that's all. I for one get very angry with the idea that this entitles them to special protection. So people are talking about you in a way you don't like? Please! I can see this is a slightly extreme view. Perhaps a tiny bit more extreme than what I feel deep down. But like I say, I'm hacked off!!!

Stayed in a very nice, cheapish place in Rome a few years ago, recommended by Alistair Sawday's Italy book. I can't remember the name but you may be better off checking out the specialplacestostay website anyhow, as Sawday may have changed his recommendation. He marks out places that are child friendly with a special rating. I think you'd be hard pressed to find somewhere in Italy that wouldn't bend over backwards for your bambi, to be honest. We splashed out when we got married and honeymooned at some very expensive places in Italy (inc Rome), just the two of us obviously. But we were always delighted to see how, even at the posh end of the market, the waiters always turned to mush and fussed whenever any "Mama" walked in for a meal with her babies. Enjoy. Envy you!!!

My 7 months old's favourite breakie is homemade Swiss "Bircher muesli", which is in the same ball park as porridge, but feels like a treat and can be made in batches to last 2-3 days, which helps with the morning rush. It is a great way to get all kinds of goodies into LOs (I have one recipe which includes shredded carrots) and my Swiss m-in-law has about 100 ways of doing it. But I have found easiest and yummiest for babies to be: 1 x banana and apple ?Ella?s Kitchen? 4-6 tbls of Greek yoghut, to taste 4 tbls of oats I bash the oats about a bit in a pestle and mortar first, because my baby is still very little. The above quantities last him 2 days. It would probably stretch to 3 if I didn?t pick at it myself. It?s yummy. Reminds me of banoffee pie. In fact, I may have some in the fridge now?..

Absolutely love Dorset, and Purbeck in particular. Ditto wonderful childhood memories. Do you camp? I hear what you say about UK weather but we've always camped in Dorset (when I was a child and now with my LOs). There are some great sites down there. Apart from one occasion when we tried out "posh" camping at Featherdown Farm near Corfe Castle (see below), we've always borrowed my parent's gigantic trailer tent. But I think there are some very good palces with cabins ready made for you, if you don't have access to a good tent with all the modern creature comforts. But whether you camp or not, I would definitely say do NOT be tempted by Featherdown Farm.

Canela I may be onto you about your place, perhaps for oct/nov when our youngest is bigger and I can face the airport with all three of ours. How easy is it to get there from airport with three young children? All our friends used to love tuscany or Amalfi Coast, but generally rave about Tenerife now they are kiddied-up.

Ooi. Red heads are tricky. My sister (and her hubbie and baby) has red hair and she physically cannot tan - only redden or burn. So she simply has to cover up and take the pills (and eat her salmon).

:-) Well it happened rather sooner than I'd planned as my 4 year old found both "Angry Arthur" and Ju Ni's recommendation of "I Feel Angry" on my desk this afternoon and because we all LOVE a new book here in our house (tears and tantrums when they cannot be taken into the bath) it was all I could do to persuade her to wait until later. I moved them both but they were retrieved by the girls for BEDTIME reading. I was slightly nervous, I'll admit. "Angry Arthur" was a big hit. It helped I think that I had both my 4 year old and my very light hearted 2 year old on my lap as we read. "So, Angry Arthur," I announced as I opened the book. First page: depicts a boy, nice and chilled, not at all angry looking. "He's not cross!" shouts my two year old. ?He?s not an Angry Arthur!? And so we began, nice and calm. And it was very moving for us all. My two year old didn't say much, but I think it was probably useful for her, as she is pretty bewildered by her sister's tirades too from time-to-time. As the story progressed, my 4 year old declared that she knew exactly what was going on. "His body is making him angry and he can't help it, Mummy." Mmmmmm, interesting! We were also very interested to see that, although they did not completely understand what was going on, none of the grown-ups were freaked out by Arthur?s behaviour, and none of them ran away from Arthur when it was happening (although he did not really seem to notice that they were there, and maybe could not hear them, thought my 4 year old). We thought Grandpa looked a bit tired out by it, which seemed fair enough. Nearer the end, we thought Grandma looked nice and cosy in her rocking chair during Arthur's anger-induced "universequake". True, she was floating through space, but she was wearing the necessary protective equipment (astronaut costume) and basically looked unphased: she was getting on with her knitting. We could imagine our Grandma doing something like that. At the end of the book, Arthur was calm and peaceful, but all alone on a piece of Mars, which I thought might have looked a bit scary, but apparently it wasn?t at all, because ?probably his mummy and daddy see he is alright now and so it?s ok for them to go?. So, that was enough for me. ?The other angry book, please,? said my LO. So then we had ?I feel angry?, which ends with the question, ?What do you do when you feel angry?? ?I cry!? shouted my two year old. (She?s right.) ?I hit and be naughty,? said no 1 in a guilty way. ?But I promise I will never do it again.? I told her that she didn?t need to make any such promise to me, and that I understood, and that it was ok with me if she was ?naughty? when she was angry. I didn't always like it, but I understood. Which some may judge to be foolish. But if you have followed all of this thread, maybe you can understand why, for me and my little girl, at this point in time, that was the answer that seemed to fit. We then had Owl Babies, a nice cuddle, and into bed. :-)

I agree with DaveR too. And both my little girls (who look like they could have originated in sweden, they are so fair) are slightly tanned all summer because they are out a LOT in the fresh air and I tell nanny to go easy on the sunscreen (ie not at all before 10:30 or after 4:30 and not ever unless will be outside for more than about 15 minutes at one time) so that they get plenty of not too strong light to make up for our awful summers and long winters. But as with EVERYthing in this child rearing game, poor old nanny gets a lot of "tut-tuts" over this and several of my friends comment frequently that my LOs look a bit too brown to be healthy. (Exact opposite of what my mother faced in her day BTW: "that child is too pale"!!)

Now in response to the recent posts other than the villification acusation.... I think you are probably right, Saffron, that there is a real difference between situational anger and a child who is - for a reason which may or may not be fathomable, and which requires a lot of respect and love and acceptance - angry a lot of the time. But I think the two blend. Because you still have all the situational stuff to handle ON TOP of whatever background noise your child is working through/chucking at you. And the background noise can make the situational stuff seem impossible What is really helpful to me and my little girl at the moment, is to pretty much to abandon the "how-to" situational stuff that Supermanny and many others, in different circumstances, may find helpful on a day-to-day basis. Yes, like oopsithinkitwasme, I can see that sometimes, concern about socialising a child, to fit in at school or to help out their teachers or whatever, might be a big concern. But as it happens for me it's not. This is partly because school is 9 months off for us and that is forever for a child her age. And secondly because my LO is a nursery 2 1/2 days a week where she is universally liked by teachers and other kids. In fact, her yearly review from her key care worker last term described her as incredibly easy to deal with. Significantly the only "issue" the nursery has is that the see my LO as an exceptionally caring child, who needs support, get this, "knowing that it is ok for her to go and play when any other child in the nursery is upset or angry". Apparently, she'll sit for a long time with other kids who are crying or storming and really sweetly try to help. (To the point she sometimes gets in the way of the teacher.) She finds it really hard to walk off and play if anyone else is sad/cross. So I think, maybe, part of what i get from her, is that when she comes home to me, she has a lot of cxxx to discharge (ie other people's feelings she has soaked up and is too little really to handle). But maybe that's not it, who knows? Maybe she is really angry because I work. Or that I have to sometimes ignore her to deal with her brother or sister. All I know is that what gets thrown at me (and only me) is storm force ten (with a lot of "i hate you" or once an "i want to make you dead") and a lot of thrashing out. And though I have this really useful (and heart warming) insight from her teachers, that maybe gives a clue to what might be going on underneath with her, it is still hard on me to deal with. So all I have been looking for (and requested in this thread, to be fair to me) was a book, that I could share with her, about how it feels to be in an emotional hurricane of negativity and rage aged 4. Because I just want to connect with her in a process which I do not fully understand but want to respect. And in her case, no, I'm not going to labour or how lashing out and hitting mummy is wrong or "inappropriate" and requires t/o. She's an incredibly caring girl. She knows it is not ok to hit! She intensly needs to hit me but I don't think she is happy about that or finds it funny or ok! She feels bad enough about it as it is, I believe. I just want to try to grow, myself, to be big enough to take it. Supermanny, everybody, sincerely, please forgive any part of my thread which has offended! But see, we don't know what we are dealing with when we talk about our own children a lot of the time, let alone when we volunteer unrequested advice to other people. Or venture bold to suggest that reading a book is all that is required to make "having children enjoyable". It's just, not the point. Not for me. As Saffron wisely and very moderately put it, it doesn't touch me. This was not begun as a thread about psychology. It was a specific request for a real life mum, in a real life situation, with a unique and lovely and incredibly challenging little girl. Hooraaay for "Angry Arthur"! XXXXX

I really don't think any vilification is going on! That would be awful. O dear. :-( I think more than one "lady", including me, has more than once acknowledged SM for his obvious kindess and willingness to put a lot of effort into trying to help. And plenty of people other than me have said that his words ARE very helpful. When I wrote, "I am not talking about Supermanny anymore, this is just a response to the last post" two or three posts above, I did NOT mean something like, "o my goodness do not mention his name." NOOOOOO!!! I meant, I want to express my views, but I don't want those views to be heard as opposition/disagreement to anything he said. Because I'm not talking about what he said, I'm just responding to the very last post by oopsithinkitwasme. Extremely sorry if I've caused offence. I was trying to ensure that I didn't. I think we all have to have a lot of confidence in each other's good faith when such difficult topics are discussed and no one can see anybody else's face or hear their tone of voice. Or in some circumstances, recognise their pain and other point of view-ed-ness. Peace and love to all!!!

Me too with blaming self. Co-sleeping though: sooooo good for LO. So well done you gillandjoe! 16 months is an heroic effort! Know how hard it is to balance with your own needs though. Tough. You'll get through it! As my husband used to joke when no 1 was about three months old (and i would wail, but what if so-and-so is right and she never takes to her own bed) at some point in the next 18 years she's going to work out how to sleep withou you, whatever you do!

I'm not talking about SuperManny anymore, this is just my response to the last post: What I react against the most (and come to think of it, dislike about some of the superNanny shows on tv) is the idea that your children kicking off or getting angry is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong: be it not giving them enough attention or not using the right discipline or managment technique (time out step, self-talk, whatever), or not having access to the right "behavioural whizz" as someone aptly said in this thread. I just don't think that is true. If you have an angry child on your hands, that is what you have on your hands. Ultimately I think it is disrepectful to the child to think there is a way of divining that the anger comes from YOUR failiure or actually has anything to do with you. Sure, sometimes kids meltdown because they are hungry or tired. So, feeding your children and putting them to bed are good ideas. Who needs to be told that? Wisdom like, watching violent tv winds kids up etc etc, has its place, but frankly, what parent isn't already hugely concerned about that kind of thing? My point is: kids are allowed to have anger which belongs to them and orginiates in them and is THEIRS. Sure I can see that a child might be angry because their parents are having a hard time (not talking about my own life there) or because someone's died or because of some other difficulty. But that does not equate to something being wrong or that you solve it or stop your kids from expressing lots of "inapporiate" (I reject that term) anger by never arguing when the kids are around, or reaching for a particular book or using a particular phrase, or this or that or whatever.

I think those concerns are really valid and I share them. I also think that each parent has to work out what is best for them and their child. I think the idea behind this concept (which is not for all) is that you teach your children best and most surely by being a role model, rather than by finger wagging or trying to "fix" or change the child. So your child will learn that it is not ok to hit people because YOU do not - in fact - go around hitting people to get what you want. There is also an idea behind it, based in eastern philosophies I think, that growth and change (including growing out of hitting mummy) is a natural and inevitable process which happens by itself if the conditions are right. And that paradoxically, the best condition for growth and change for any human, including a little one, is an environment of being accepted exactly as you are, warts and all, not being lectured and told to be different. Just, do nothing, let the tree grow, kind of thing. A third idea is that many of the things that as parents we find hardest to deal with, the challenging stuff, is actually a sign of good development, for example, of a child's intense human need for self determination and desire for independence. That's not to say that you simply indulge the child's every whim. Just when the child is kicking off at you because you won't or can't give them what they want, you try to bring a positive perspective to that and let it be, rather than see it as a discipline issue and punish or try to control it. I do not think this means that you have to be ok with your son hitting you in anger. You are allowed to have your own boundaries too! And from a purely practical point of view, if (like me) you go through periods of dealing with challenging physical behaviour a lot of the time, and have other things to do or other children to care for too, you cannot possibly always (or even usually) respond by getting on the floor and channelling the child's energies. Plus the specific suggestion of a play fight will not always be authentic coming from you. It's only natural that, sometimes, when your child hits you, no matter how hard you tell yourself, "he's only four, he's only four" you may be a bit p'd off yourself! And a play fight that channelled the adult's anger might not be so good! But as one idea to reach for on occasions when it feels right to you, to connect with the child, my short experience of this idea is that it is GREAT. It probably only needs to happen on occasions for your child to take away a lot of love and acceptance from it anyway. You will absolutely not be giving the child the idea that hitting in anger is ok. A play fight is a completely different vibe from that. Its fun. If you try to difuse your child's anger by suggesting one and they don't click into it being fun, but just want to use you as a punch bag, I would personally not go for that! I could see that somepeople might but not me I don't think. I also think play wrestling, pillow fights, knocking stuff about with plastic bats, could be a great way to connect and have fun with a "lively" child when they are NOT in the midst of a storm. As you can see, I have had cause to think a lot about this. At the moment, I seem to be devoting a lot of my energy to trying to work it through, and this forum is great for that. But ultimately, who knows?? Do your best, be yourself. Have confidence in your child's innate abilty to learn and grow. It'll be ok. Edited to put a ps to oppsithinkitwasme: just want to make absolutely clear, none of the things you describe yourself as doing, sound to me like you are in danger of making your son afraid of his anger. Quite the opposite. XX

"Angry Arthur" arrived in the post this morning. LOVE IT!!! I'm going to be really careful about sharing it with my LO. I think I'll need to pick a time when there is no (and has not recently been) any edge of a struggle between us. I don't want her to get the vibe from me, "This is what you are like and it is awful!!" Though this would clearly be the exact opposite message from the one intended by the creators of the book, fact is, if I am honest, it is sometimes what I feel, when I am not my loving self, and I really do not want to burden her with that. BUT, even if I never share it with her, or I try it and she's not that into it, I will always be very grateful for this recommendation. Because this book changes ME. It inspires in me an enourmous amount of compassion for my very angry child, in a way no conversation, no guru, no complex and sometimes clouded real-life encounter with her anger ever has. It also has very powerfully, I hope once and for all, completely silenced the critical voice in my head, that says, "You are her mother! Do something!" The nearness, and yet the utter remoteness from the child, of the adults depicted in each scene says it all. And I just love the grown-ups' relaxed bewilderment too. I can see why some people are nervous of this book. But I would highly recommend any parent of a child who gets very angry to buy this book for themselves. Thank you forumites! WMxx

I had it all figured out in advance that my first baby would sleep in four hour slots and I would be in charge. Then she arrived and I literally did not put her down at all for 12 weeks and co-slept for a year after that. So that showed me! Now she's four and still not that great at staying in her own bed. She comes in with me whenever she wants. And yes, my husband has been seen in the streets with a buggy at midnight when I've had a deadline on a piece of work and one of our babies has refused to go down without me... I don't know how many "rod for your own back" comments I've had over the years. I prefer, "blessing for my own baby".

I think in Sweden vitamin D is added to all fresh milk, because of the low sunlight levels. Much as folic acid is added to bread. We should do that here in the Uk. If you live north of about Birmingham, I think it is, you'll struggle ever to make much vitamin D in your skin. Not an immediately helpful suggestion, I realise...

My daughter (4) takes a class with one boy and about 6 or 7 other girls at St Faith's, Red Post Hill on Thursdays. There is a LOT of pink around, even for my tastes TBH, but the little boy wears a very smart black and white outfit.

Another professional child carer pm'd me about how having her own children after 14 years as a nanny was a real eye-opener and changed the way she thinks about other people's kids for whom she cares. And in reverse, my sister visited me from Newcastle last week with her one baby. He was cranky. I took him for her. And I remembered, how so many things about babies and children are so much more fun, and easy, when you are not the mother. Ie when you don't feel ultimately responsible, when you don't have love the size of a planet bursting through your heart. When the little person does not treat you as the safest and most secure depository of all their turmoil. When you are not, for that little person, Mummy, bigger than life itself in their eyes. I dig what Susyp says about the pain.

I've had Ameda lactaline personal for years. Double pump, electric. It's very good. I've had two. The first saw me through nearly two babies with 3x daily use 5 days a week for about 8 months both times. It then started to splutter a bit so I bought a new one - slightly updated, different shape but just as good.

Totally Saffron. I am touched by the need for deep breathing/emotional management and self-reflection from time-to-time in the happy task of caring for toddlers. For the adult, though, not the child.

Ah joy! Or my two year old's penchant for moving things to better places for Mummy. Glasses, keys, phones, squirrelled away in the most genius hiding places. Not "hiding". No sir. She's "doing tidy up time!"

Quote: "If you have a child that has a melt down over taking a new library book in the bath with them, that the child has not had someone say to them. "Now it's bathtime, we can play with the toys in the bath and read our 'water books' {as I call them}. Then when we get out we can sit together and read your new book" Ok, SuperManny, I'm not sure you are for real. You have a word (water books) to fend off a spontaneous outburst over reading in the bath? And it works like magic? WOW! If you are seriously coming from a place that says that "meltdowns" in toddlers and pre-schoolers are a preventable sign of the adult carer getting it wrong, or "not having done or said" such and such a magic word or action, then your thoughts truly are of no practical help to parents. And I'm sorry, mate, but I ain't taking marriage guidance tips from you. :-) WMxxx

Really? In the specific context of PRE-schoolers? So, telling a three or four year old to practise controlled breathing, or "self-talk" is helpful for them as a response to temper tantrums? I genuinely and respectfully bow to your (and perhaps SuperManny's) enviable, valuable and (compared to me) way superior experience of everything that happens to a child from infant school onwards. But I gotta say, I cannot agree that SuperManny's advice is helpful in a thread about children below school age (which this thread is). Like Inkmaiden, I think attempts to manage and/or rationalise anger/temper tantrums in kids as young as mine is counterproductive and unfair on them. Could I just paint the picture for anyone who has not lived/worked with very little children yet or recently? It is not necessary to scratch your head and ask what "anger triggers" are operating on a child of this age. It is very, very obvious what has made them angry at any one time (although sometimes a challenge to accept/dig their reasoning). So, I'm talking about (completely age-appropriate) TOTAL, immediate, heart-broken melt downs over, for example, not being able to take a new library book into the bath with them. Or uncontrollable, frustrated, thrasing out and raging because, for some logistical reason or other which means nothing from the child's point of view, we cannot walk home from nursery via the park today. You seriously advocate starting a dialouge with such a young child about recognising their "anger cues" and brain storming with them to develop a way to control it (count to ten, breath deeply, self-talk, going to a self-created calm down zone)? You think a little kid that size can rationalise what is happening to them? You think it's fair to ask a four year old to self-edit her expressions of emotions by telling herself, "Be calm! You can do this!"? IMHO, no child that age should be expected to "talk about it" in that way or to develop anger-management skills. I completely accept that SuperManny was being very kind and trying to be helpful, and that he took a lot of time to write two exceptionally long posts in response to my request. That is partly why I'm doing him the justice of a thoughtful response.

I've no doubt he was. And as a mother of a four (and two and 0.5) year old, (ie pre schoolers, which this thread is clearly about) I'm saying, for this age group, not helpful, thanks. And in places, really very inappropriate. Which are comments I make in good faith in the hope of being helpful to him.